Udupi: Elected Women Representatives Empowerment

The Hunger Project-India (THP) uses a multi-pronged strategy to strengthen the political leadership and participation of elected women representatives (EWRs) in Gram Panchayats (GPs). The strategies aim to build the capacities of individual EWRs and an enabling environment for them to exercise their leadership effectively. The Hunger Project facilitates the leadership of these women leaders with key interventions in each year of their five year tenures: Year One: Conduct Women Leadership Workshops (WLW) and follow-up needs-based workshops to strengthen skills of women leaders; Year Two: Work with leaders to create bottom-up plans for villages to meet basic needs; Year Three: Facilitate the formation of federations at district and state level to overcome bureaucratic obstacles; Year Four: Focus on ensuring successful implementation of plans and policy changes, and; Year Five: Carry out campaigns to encourage participation of women as voters and as candidates in the run-up to elections.
The Hunger Project has been working with elected women representatives in the state of Karnataka since 2001, holding women’s leadership workshops and building capacity among elected women representatives from various districts of the region. The Hunger Project has focused on expanding partnerships at the grassroot level, enabling a larger percentage of elected women representatives in various districts to be engaged through the Women’s Leadership Workshops. These programs are currently active in fifteen districts.
Udupi is a district in the southwestern state of Karnataka. THP works in 15 Gram Panchayats in one block in Udupi.The SWEEP (Strengthening Women's Empowerment in Electoral Processes) program is an intensive campaign and capacity-building strategy for awareness raising among women throughout rural India. Through meetings, film screenings, and workshops, THP-India seeks to empower the women citizens to access their rights as voters, and leaders. In identifying potential leaders, staff members are able to make connections with engaged and motivated women who could potentially run for office for reserved seats in their panchayats. In the first half of 2015, 9 of these type of events were held, with 12 already elected women representatives directly engaging with 341 potential women leaders

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Activities

The Hunger Project, in partnership with many local civil society organizations, has trained more than 79,000 elected women representatives. Examples of the activities within this strategy include:
Empowering Women in Elections: To encourage voter participation among women and nominations of potential women leaders, The Hunger Project conducts intensive pre-election campaigns. SWEEP (Strengthening Women's Empowerment in Electoral Processes) campaigns include meetings, film screenings, street plays, door-to-door contacts, trainings and distribution of posters and pamphlets.
Federations for Advocacy and Mutual Empowerment: To empower women leaders and their communities, The Hunger Project supports the formation of federations among their elected leaders to voice their concerns as a collective unit.
Mobilizing the Media to Support Women Leaders: To highlight the work of women leaders and Panchayati Raj, The Hunger Project actively engages with the media and annually awards the Sarojini Naidu Prize, showcasing the efforts being made by the elected women and recognizes three journalists reporting on their work in Hindi, English and other Indian language categories.

Additional information

The Hunger Project has been active in India since 1984 and currently works across seven states, 60 districts, and more than 3,000 village clusters (panchayats). In response to the 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution that mandated that one-third of all seats in panchayats be reserved for women, The Hunger Project developed its comprehensive strategy, the Panchayati Raj Campaign. The Hunger Project's approach of mobilizing people for self-reliant action, empowering women as key change agents and engaging with local government has provided the solid foundation upon which to expand local development initiatives throughout the seven states of India in which THP is present.